Professional Writing Best Practices

Curator and art historian J. Gibran Villalobos will provide insight into best practices for writing about your creative practice with an emphasis on artist statements, project descriptions, and bios.

Following a concise lecture, this hands-on workshop will provide time and space for on-site revisions and an opportunity to receive constructive feedback on a selected writing sample. Participants are required to bring a 1-2 paragraph printed artist statement (not more than a page) that will be shared with other artists in small peer critique groups guided by Gibran._____________________________________________________

Learning Objectives

--Establish clear, concise language about your creative practice that can be adapted for various contexts and audiences--Understand how your statements, descriptions, etc. are being interpreted by others--Develop a thorough and useful revisions process--Real-time response to writing samples______________________________________________________

Guest SpeakerJ. Gibran Villalobos is an administrator, curator, and art historian. Previously Gibran was the Exhibitions and Collection Coordinator for the City of Glendale, Arizona, organizing exhibitions with local organizations in conjunction with municipal exhibition spaces as well as temporary public art projects. He has served on the Arizona-Sonora Administrators Exchange, and panels for the National Association for Latino Arts and Culture, and Americans for the Arts. At the School of the Art Institute of Chicago he served as a Curatorial Assistant in the Department of Exhibitions and Exhibition Studies. His research has been presented at the Hemi GSI convening at UCLA, the 12th Havana Biennial, and the American Association of Geographers.

During his time in Chicago, he has managed a series of projects across top institutions including the Chicago Park District, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2014 he piloted a five-year initiative, The Re:Center Project working closely with Cultural Centers in the Chicago Park District to work with grassroot organizations and shape cultural programming at park sites. He was the inaugural speaker for the Latino Studies Symposium at Northern Arizona University in 2015. In 2016 he was elected to attend the Advocacy Leadership Institute where he was invited to the White House Office of Public Engagement, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to speak to key issues affecting Latinxs in Chicago. He has served on research grant panels for NALAC and the National Endowment for the Arts. He currently serves on the Auxiliary Board for the National Museum of Mexican Art and on the executive board for The Association of American Culture (TAAC). In 2018 he was elected by the Arts Alliance Illinois to represent the arts at National Arts Advocacy Day in Washington D.C. He is faculty lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the Department of Arts Administration & Policy and currently serves as the Partnerships and Engagement Liaison at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago._____________________________________________________